The Resurgence of Legends
by Spikey44
Summary: Continuation of 'Lente's Burden'. Lente came and she wrought her havoc and now Ivalice is forever changed. The Viera are in the ascendant and the old races of Ivalice have awoken from years of dormancy determined to wrest control from the humes. But what, you ask, of our legendary sky pirates? What became of Balthier and Fran and do happy endings truly exist?
1. Chapter 1

**The Resurgence of Legends**

Disclaimer: I own nothing except the words on the page :)

 _Okay for anyone who might read this, this story is a continuation of my uncompleted story_ Lente's Burden _, which was part of a series of stories focused around Balthier and Fran's adventures beyond the canon storyline of the game. This story has its own plot but will explain the storyline to Lente's Burden as well. It takes place several years after the events of Lente's Burden and picks up with the characters in quite different circumstances..._

Prologue: Well, We have to Start Somewhere

 _You undoubtedly want to know about Lente, the self-professed Vieran Goddess in a centuries old snit who very nearly destroyed all Ivalice. Well tough luck. This is my memoir and I'm not of a mind to grant that bloody woman any more page time than she deserves._

 _Disappointed? Put off by my tone, perhaps? Mayhap you are asking why you should continue reading if I am to be so disobliging, hm? Well, why are you? No, that was not a rhetorical question. I mean it. What are you reading for? What is it you hope to find here?_

 _I've often wondered why people read memoirs. Do my fellow humes live such empty lives that they must live vicariously through the likely highly factually inaccurate memories of another, I used to wonder from time to time – although admittedly not that often. I had better things to do with my time than think about other people. Alas things change and I've since had ample opportunity to discover the answer. Yes, the lives of ordinary humes are that bloody boring. I'd scarce imagined how boring living a life of tedious sameness could be. No wonder so many of you wander off to be devoured by passing fiends, adopt Marlboro's as ill-advised pets, and otherwise indulge in rampant stupidity to pass the time. I understand it now. Boredom is the mind killer. I have new found respect to all you markhunters who drift around on foot from one hunt to another in search of vorpal bunnies and the like._

 _What I would not give for a rampaging Dream Hare right now, or an insane quasi-deity with unfortunate possessive qualities; perhaps a megalomaniacal would-be Emperor? A small pirate war wouldn't go amiss either, or just a single bloody assassin. I miss the days when everyone and his bangaa uncle wanted to kill me._

 _Have you heard the adage what doesn't kill you makes you stronger? Well I'm here to tell you that's bollocks. What doesn't kill you eventually loses interest and goes off to kill something else. It's galling. But enough self-pity, time now to get on with the important matters. The self-aggrandising full and complete recitation of my fascinating and enthralling –and most certainly never boring – life story…_

'Master Balthier sir?'

Jolting in alarm like a bolt of thunder had just hit him topside the head Balthier's hand jerked across the page scoring a thick line of ink through the paragraph he'd just written.

'Bloody hell.'

There was a small urchin standing in the doorway to the modest but comfortable abode Balthier had been grudgingly calling home for longer than he wished to admit. The child was hume and male with thin brown limbs barely covered by cotton pants and an open vest. He was also adorned with seashell jewellery and his hair was a rich thick brown. He blinked at Balthier expectantly. Balthier blinked back at him blearily. He'd been sitting with his back to the door facing the smooth terracotta brown wall and now the daylight oozing around the boy's frame and spilling across his swept floor gave him an instant headache.

'It's time Master.' The boy said.

'Time for what?' Balthier asked genuinely nonplussed. In his opinion time had no meaning here. Everything on this island stayed the same, following the same endless idyllic rhythm day in and day out.

'Didn't you hear the bell, Master?' The boy asked him almost reproachfully. 'It's time for class.'

Balthier did not groan because to do so would be undignified and a sign of weakness, but if he had it would have been a groan from a place of deep existential pain and misery, reminiscent of the sort of soul-wrenching moans the newly condemned in stinking dungeons were so widely renowned for. (Though his circumstances may be drastically altered Balthier's penchant for melodrama remained undiminished.)

Pushing the chair back he stood up, and if the room span a little and his vision was a little swimmy he was adept enough at pretending to be sober that boy-urchin did not notice. 'Off you go then,' he muttered flapping his hands at the boy, 'lead on.'

The school house was directly across the sandy patch of ground laughingly referred to as the 'exercise court' by the school administrator, a verbose Seeq with delusions of academic grandeur. Inside the classroom twenty urchins all much alike sat neatly two by two at driftwood desks. There was something insultingly demanding about their expectant and eager little faces.

'Alright,' Balthier said stalling for time as he strode in front of the class to the blackboard covering the wall, 'does someone want to tell me what in buggery you're supposed to be learning today?'

There was a flutter of tittering laughter and an appreciative fidgeting of limbs as the children settled in for "Master Balthier's" unique approach to the advancement of young minds.

'Poetry, sir,' said a girl in the front row who had a head of thick braids that sprang off her crown like a profusion of beaded rope.

Balthier eyed the girl suspiciously. 'Why would I teach you poetry?' He asked. A little shiver of worry passed down his spine. How drunk would he need to be to start reciting poetry to ten year olds?

'You weren't sir,' the girl responded promptly, 'Mistress Dalma was, but then she…'

'Ah yes,' Balthier seized on recollection with not a little relief, 'she had that unfortunate incident with a pack of couerls.' He nodded and then asked, 'I don't suppose any of the buggers coughed up her foot, hm?'

'No sir.'

'Hmm,' bracing his hands on the desk in front of the blackboard he surveyed his class. There was definitely an edge of something furtive about the little blighters. 'Well then,' he said testing out his theory, 'does someone happen to have a copy of the anthology Mistress Dalma was reading from? What was it, the works of that Rozzarian fop, Riccio, or maybe Edna Marbuckle? I was always rather partial to her Ode to a Hanged Man Dangling from a Tree.'

A shiver of dismay rippled from the serried rows of desks. Round childish faces cast each other slightly bewildered and rather alarmed looks. Balthier kept his smile on the inside and pasted a look of mild inquiry onto his face while he waited.

'Uh sir?' A boy in the middle row stuck up his hand. 'You ain't really going to make us read poetry are you?'

'I should,' Balthier told him and waited for the gasps to subside before addressing the rest of the class, 'consider this a lesson. Never commit to a con unless you are willing to see it through. You never know when someone will call your bluff.' He affixed a stern look on his face and cast his eyes over the rows of dark faces.

'That said,' he clapped his hands together, 'I'd sooner gnaw off my fingers than read about some distant Margrace bastard's meditations on a cracked chamber pot. So who feels like finding out what happens when one applies Marlboro stomach acid to fire magicite?'

The class erupted in squeals of glee and shortly thereafter the desk erupted in flame but that merely afford Balthier the occasion to demonstrate various techniques for putting out magical fires without the aid of blizzaga. All in all a good time was had by all and it was entirely possible that one child at least gleamed something useful from the experience.

Dismissing the class at the correct time Balthier left the school grounds and wandered toward the tree line. Dianitz Island was mostly jungle with the village huddled by the shore on the south side of the island. The rest of the island was uninhabited, at least by humes, bangaa or seeq; a pristine natural wilderness full of ancient ruins and vicious carnivores with a penchant for biting the legs off unwary school teachers. It was into these dark verdant depths that Balthier plunged. The canopy closed over his head, sealing him inside a sweaty, dripping tangle of foliage and twisted roots.

Balthier was unafraid and not merely because he was still riding the edge of his day drinking. The woods offered him no challenge as he walked, in fact paths opened under his feet and branches swept aside to let him pass. He was known here. The beat of the Heart of the Wood just barely audible in his ears. He stopped in his usual spot in a moss quilted clearing dominated by a single venerable old tree warted with impressively pungent toadstools. Sighing he dropped down on the deadfall log beside the tree, resting his shoulder against the gnarled trunk. Head in hands he swept his fingers through his hair and scraped his palms down his cheeks, wincing when he realised he'd forgotten to shave again. The chain around his neck spilled loose of his open collar and the broken half of Lente's tear seemed to shimmer, releasing just a little inner light. Reflexively he closed his fist around the tear bringing the jewel up to his lips.

'I miss you Fran.'

Heat gathered behind his eyes and his hand shook as he brushed his fingers across his face, swiping away the moisture before it could gather on his lashes. Unhappiness clawed its way up his throat and a rage he could not speak burned his lungs. It had been years. He'd tried to ignore it. He'd come here to the most boring place in Ivalice to outrun the truth; to hide from the passage of time by burying himself in stolid tedium. In moments like this, in the silence of his own mind even Balthier's impressive ability to lie to himself failed him. He was alone. Ivalice had left him behind; he was no longer the Leading Man. Faram take him, he was _thirty four_. He'd spotted a grey hair in the mirror the other day (just one lone grey in an otherwise ample head of wheat brown hair but that was how it started. The next thing you knew you were asking your tailor to let out your vests and complaining about gout.)

Of course, it wasn't just Ivalice who had left him.

Lurching up off the log Balthier paced across the springy ground. The tear lay against his collarbone and he rubbed absently at his chest where, under his pristine white shirt, the perfect imprint of Fran's hand blazed like a brand against his skin. The tear, her mark, these were all he had left. Well, no that wasn't true, there was something else that he and Fran had between them, a treasure of such magnitude he'd been forced to give her up as well.

Here it was, the blasted tears. Furious and ashamed Balthier scrubbed his face, roundly condemning himself a fool.

Resisting punching the tree because he wasn't quite that much of a fool Balthier leaned his head against the knobby bark, too involved in his own distress to notice or much care that the toadstools were leaving spores all over his shirt.

'How much longer Fran? How much longer do I have to wait?'

The tear pulsed against his breastbone and if it was an answer, it certainly was no comfort.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter One: To Viera or Not to Viera

 _Author note: In-story canon established in 'Lente's Burden' that there are no male viera; all viera have to breed with a male from another compatible species (hume, seeq, bangaa, helgas) in order to reproduce; any offspring will always be female and therefore viera, no matter what species the father is._

 _Also thanks everyone who reviewed for your kindness and enthusiasm!_

* * *

Niem reclined. She reclined in the village. She reclined in the mate's enclave; she reclined in front of Lulucce's store. At one point she reclined supine on the floor and village-sister Fuen tripped over her. It was at this time that Aunt Mjrn intervened.

'What is it that you do, Niem?'

'I am reclining.' Niem responded dutifully.

Mjrn absorbed this for a moment. 'Why is it that you recline?' She asked finally.

Niem stared at her aunt as this seemed a very odd question for her aunt to be asking. 'I am Viera,' she said warily as she was beginning to suspect that something was not quite right, 'Viera recline gracefully. It is what we do.'

Once more Mjrn absorbed this in silence for a moment before asking, 'Who is it that has told you this niece?'

'Father told me.'

'It is he who told you to lie on the floor?' Mjrn asked doubtfully.

Niem opened her mouth but did not speak. She was a very honest child and it was important that she always be sure that what she said was correct. Mjrn waited while Niem thought through her answer.

'No,' she said slowly, 'he did not say that I should lie on the floor. He said that in his experience, other than mother, the viera he had seen had a penchant for graceful and vaguely suggestive reclining on any and all available surfaces while maintaining a fairly useless mien of casual contempt for all passing lifeforms.'

Bright eyed Niem asked, 'Aunt Mjrn who is Mien and why is she useless?'

Mjrn hesitated and then decided to ignore everything her niece had just said.

'It is not a good thing to lie on the floor and cause your village-sister to drop a tray of fresh made pottery,' she said returning to the salient point.

'I am sorry for the pottery,' Niem admitted remembering the tremendous crash as earthenware shards went everywhere.

'I know that you are,' Mjrn assured her, 'but you must show you are sorry by helping Fuen for the rest of the day.'

Niem opened her mouth on the beginning of an aggrieved wail.

'Niem,' Mjrn warned.

Niem snapped her jaws shut but they popped open again when a new thought came to her, 'Pottery is not Viera. Seeq and Bangaa make pots, humes as well. I know this for I have asked. How am I to learn to be Viera if I do not do things that are Viera alone?'

Mjrn's left ear twitched. Now they came to the heart of the issue at last. Placing her hand on her small niece's shoulder she ushered the child over to one of the benches on the winding way and together they sat.

'Tell me what is troubling you niece.'

Niem swung her feet and looked down at the woven mesh of grass and root forming the village path. Her cropped hair was a pale caramel brown colour and it swung against her cheeks, curling slightly as her mother's was wont to do. Mjrn studied her niece, picking out the features that bore the mark of her sister and those that whispered of her hume father, as well as those that were purely new and uniquely Niem. Thoughts wandering Mjrn found herself imagining what her own child might look like and absently stroked the gentle swell of her belly under her tunic.

Niem noticed. She looked from her aunt's growing belly up to her face, sudden tears springing to her eyes.

'I am not learning fast enough,' she said.

Mjrn reached out to brush the tears from her niece's cheeks. Niem's emotions came readily to the surface, as fast and as fleeting as rainstorms over the Ozmone Plains. This, Mjrn thought, was her hume heritage making itself known as her sister, Fran, had never been so excitable.

'What is that you seek to learn child?' she asked gently.

'How to be Viera,' Niem cried a touch of annoyance in her tone. 'I am here with the Wood to learn to be Viera. Father said it was mother's will that I grow here in the Heart of the Wood.'

Mjrn nodded already well aware of this. 'You are Viera Niem,' she promised her niece. 'Why would you doubt this?'

Niem's sharp little face was a picture of misery. 'Luda,' she said.

Mjrn understood. She reached out and clasped her niece's hand, 'Luda will be found, Niem. Trust that your elder village-sisters search for her even now.'

Niem shook her head dejectedly, 'The Wood would not speak to Luda. It did not want her. Now she is gone.'

Mjrn looked up and her gaze followed the winding path toward the village leader's hut, Jote's hut. Mjrn knew that Luda's disappearance was a matter of grave concern to all in Eruyt, none more so than Jote.

Many things had changed in the last decade. Her sister Jote had once believed it was the Wood's will that she preside over the final extinction of Eruyt village. Mjrn and the rest of the village-sisters had believed they would remain barren, that no viera child would be born under Golmore's canopy ever again. They had all believed that the Green Way would dwindle into the mists of the past.

Then Fran battled Lente, taking her place at the base of great Yggdrasil to speak of the ways of Ivalice, of the humes and the other races, and to share her vitality with the Tree of Life at the centre of Ivalice. Awoken by Fran's fierce will Yggdrasil sent new life through the roots of Ivalice. Fecundity returned to the viera and with it the imperative to cast aside solitude and partake of Ivalice once more.

The viera of Eruyt left the village now not as outcasts but as explorers, supplicants and eager initiates in the ways of Ivalice following in the footsteps of intrepid Fran and those other sisters who had learned to forge their own paths in the hume world. The outcasts were, in turn, welcomed back into the embrace of the Wood and the Green Way expanded across every continent.

Eventually men came. They came to pledge themselves to the Viera, to offer themselves as mates and through a joining of flesh bind their spirits with viera so that new life might grow. It was a sacred trust, to be the mate of a viera. No simple coupling. The men that came had to be judged, to stand before Jote and the verdict of the Wood. A viera mating was lifelong and in so joining with a viera the man must forsake the touch of all other females; they must agree that their seed could only go toward the growth of Viera. Any man who sought to plant his own dynasty, as once Raithwall had, would be cast aside, lest Lente's heartbreak afflict another viera and cast all Viera-kind back into dwindling solitude.

Luda had been one of the first of the new daughters of the Wood. Her mother had been an outcast, long since lost to the Green Way. She had joined with a seeq accessories trader who walked the Mosphoran Highwaste, selling his wares to wayfarers and the like. The pregnancy had been a surprise; Luda's mother had not felt the change in the Wood Fran's ascension wrought. She had not known that her long barren partnership might bear fruit. She had died in labour far from the Wood's embrace and Luda had been raised by her father until he had eventually brought her to Eruyt.

Jote had worried, as had they all, that Luda would be deaf to the Wood. Viera born away from the Wood oft times grew up unable to walk the Green Way. Jote had taken Luda in to honour her late mother and had tried to teach her to hear the Wood. Luda and Niem had become friends and Niem had been stricken when Luda had vanished in the night a sennight ago. Mjrn and many others believed that the older girl had fled, devastated by her failure to hear the Heart of the Wood.

'You must not fear that the Wood will reject you,' Mjrn told her niece.

'I know,' Niem sniffled, 'the Wood would not dare, for I am the daughter of Fran and she has the ear of Yggdrasil itself.' Niem lifted her chin. 'I am a child of Two Paths; my parents joining was the will of Yggdrasil. I am extremely special.'

Both Mjrn's ears twitched. 'You must be modest,' she admonished her niece.

'Why?' Niem asked puzzled. 'I am only saying what I have heard Aunt Jote and my elder village-sisters saying.'

Mjrn did not wince for viera did not wince but had she worn a collar as the hume men sometimes did, she would have felt the need to loosen it in some embarrassment. 'All viera are born equal under the Wood child,' she reminded her niece.

Niem's expression immediately sharpened to an almost predatory point and Mjrn tensed. In that moment it was readily apparent who Niem's father was. Her face was alight with sly intelligence.

'Then why did the Wood reject Luda?' She pounced. 'Luda is my friend and therefore she is special too.'

Niem's chin jutted fiercely, 'I wish the Wood would hurry up and talk to me so that I might leave the village and go and find Luda. Then we can go to the island and be with father until mother has finished talking to Yggdrasil.'

Mjrn was stung, 'You are unhappy here?'

Immediately Niem's expression melted from fierceness to softness and she squeezed her aunt's hand.

'It is not that,' she admitted. 'I miss Luda and I miss father, who cannot visit often, and mother who has not sent me a dream in a very long time.' She sucked in a hiccupping breath, 'There is only so much graceful reclining I can do before I become exceedingly bored.'

Once more she speaks of this reclining, Mjrn thought, truly puzzled as to what the child meant. Dismissing this particular strangeness, which she attributed to her hume father's influence, Mjrn rose from the bench and smiled down at her niece.

'I have asked Tomaj to come to the mates' enclave,' she told her niece before suggesting, 'Perhaps Vaan will be with him, or Nono, and they might help us find Luda?'

'And send a message to father?'

Delighted Niem sprang off the bench and grabbed her aunt's hand, tugging on it as she ran ahead.

'Hurry Aunt, we must go at once.'


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Two: The Benevolent Society of Airborne Altruists**

Penelo brushed a sweaty strand of hair off her brow and straightened up slowly, careful of the twinge in her back. She rubbed her abdomen and looked across the refugee camp to the brilliant red sun as it sank down past the dunes. Sunset in the desert was always breath taking. Not that Penelo had time to appreciate the view.

'Penelo,' her assistant Selphie Gainsborough ran up to her, bag of supplies bouncing off her hip. The woman's mass of brown curls sprang up off her head and her rounded cheeks were red.

Penelo braced herself for bad news.

'I have bad news,' Selphie said not leaving her in suspense for long. Penelo was grateful she'd braced herself.

'Alright,' she said, 'what is it?'

Selphie hesitated, 'well…' her big blue eyes slanted to the side to root on a patch of parched red earth. The ground here still bore scorch marks from previous battle.

Penelo had had reservations about locating the camp here, so close to the frontlines. What had decided her was the simple fact that there was nowhere in fifty mile radius that was any safer. At least the fighting had moved on from here and was unlikely to return. If the tide of battle did turn, if the Benowlin Rebels gained ground to the east, they would at least have warning. So long as the Al-Salidi Pass remained clear they'd be able to move the refugees in time. Sudden panic gripped Penelo.

'It's not the Pass, is it? They haven't taken it?' She asked, her mind throwing up images of the camp surrounded on all sides by the different Rozzarian factions.

'No, no,' the Draklor Alumni assured her, 'it's, well, there's an insane viera rampaging through the desert. She's already slaughtered an entire Benowlin unit camped on the Den'loite dunes. The Benowlin elders want you to do something about the viera. They say if you don't they'll consider us in breach of truce.'

'That's ridiculous!' Outraged Penelo could only gape. 'How can the elders possibly blame us for a murderous viera? There aren't any viera in the camp. They wouldn't dare break our truce!'

Penelo had worked hard to forge a truce with each side of the civil war, using every ounce of diplomatic skill she possessed – as well as a judicious amount of well executed magick – to convince each of the warring factions to view the International Air Patrol and Rescue as a neutral body unaffiliated with any single side of the conflict. International Air Patrol and Rescue, or The Benevolent Society of Airborne Altruists as a certain retired sky pirate of Penelo's acquaintance liked to mock, was the culmination of years of hard work. It had been Vaan's idea, although he'd only really fixed on it after they'd managed to convince Ragnarok, Destroyer of Worlds, to well, _not_ destroy their world and then stood helplessly by as Fran and Balthier walked through a dimensional rift in the ruins of Mount Bur Omisace temple into the Heart of Ivalice.

She and Vaan had been somewhat at loose ends after that.

Thankfully, in one of those rare moments when Balthier proved he actually did care about someone other than Fran and his ship, Nono informed them that he'd written a will bequeathing his hidden fortune – most of which wasn't even ill-gotten as apparently Balthier was a surprisingly shrewd investor – to Vaan and Penelo. More important than the gil however, was the access to Balthier's extensive network of moogle allies, friends and business partners all of whom helped them not only avoid dealing with the dangerous fallout of near Armageddon but also helped them establish their credentials as Ivalice's only purely humanitarian aid organisation.

Not that any of that was relevant right now.

Shaking her head to clear it Penelo realised Selphie had been speaking and she'd completely missed it. Now the slightly younger woman was watching her expectantly and she had no idea why. This was not that unusual an occurrence as Selphie used to be one of the 'Cohort' a small group of incredibly gifted Draklor students who followed Balthier around during his tenure as director eavesdropping on his every move and secret agenda. Something they were able to do because, for the most part, Balthier had been completely oblivious to their existence even when they were in the same room as him.

During the events of near-Armageddon Penelo and the cohort had become sort-of-friends. When she'd been stabbed by an insane Archadian senator and her spirit extracted from her body so that she might be used as bait for Vaan and therefore Balthier, who Senator Madrigalise wanted to use to spark off the destruction of the hume race, the cohort had worked tirelessly to keep her body alive until her spirit could be returned to it. Afterward Selphie had pledged herself to International Air Patrol and Rescue, and mostly independently decided to become Penelo's very own amanuensis. Penelo had been flattered but also confused, firstly because she didn't know what an amanuensis did and then, after consulting a dictionary, confused because she didn't really see how she needed her own personal scribe. She hadn't had the heart to refuse Selphie however and it had been surprisingly easy to get used to having a personal assistant after that.

(Penelo still insisted on writing her own letters though.)

Sighing Penelo rebuked herself for her wandering thoughts and tried to focus. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'What did you say?'

Selphie frowned at her, 'I said the viera is asking for you. That's why the elders think she's working for us. She told them she'd spare them if they brought you to her.'

'Oh,' Penelo blinked. 'Why doesn't the viera just come and talk to me herself?'

'I think it might be because she's a rampaging lunatic,' Selphie suggested. 'If I may, Penelo,' she added clearly attempting tact, 'I don't think that's the sort of person we should be inviting into camp. She might scare the children.' She paused for thought before adding, 'or possibly eat them.'

Penelo huffed out another breath. She was hot and sweaty and her back really ached but she supposed this was the sort of thing that happened when you saved the world a lot and told everyone you were going to keep doing it professionally.

'Alright, fine. I'll go and meet with this viera.'

'Ah,' Selphie's eyes widened. 'Are you sure that's wise?' she asked.

Penelo frowned at her. 'No.' she admitted. 'But clearly we're not going to get any peace and quiet until I do, so I don't see what else I can do.'

Selphie was clearly a little concerned by this, but considering she was the one who'd told Penelo about the viera in the first place this seemed a little hypocritical. Jacinto, the camp's foreman was also unimpressed when she told him she was going out into the dunes after dusk to meet with an allegedly homicidal viera who had already taken out a pocket of guerrilla fighters singlehandedly.

'What would your husband say?'

He asked her folding strong dark forearms over his long pale lavender cotton robes. His hair, woven with jade beads hung down past his shoulders in soft locks. Penelo had been startled to the point the first time she'd heard Jacinto speak. Familiar with Al-Cid Margrace's thick syrupy accent she had been confused at first to find that Jacinto spoke standard Ivalice tongue with a faint Dalmascan accent. He'd explained to her that his family had moved to Nalbina when he was a boy to help rebuild the town after Dalmasca's liberation. They'd become fast friends after that.

Right now however it wasn't a look of friendship Penelo offered him when she told him, 'I took down the Archadian Empire when I was sixteen. I've been dead and came back. I'm on a first name basis with every monarch and leader in Ivalice as well as one Destroyer of Worlds. _My husband_ knows I am perfectly capable of going to talk to one angry viera.'

Jacinto arched one eyebrow. 'Pride comes before the fall.' He said.

Penelo pushed the same stringy lock of hair behind her ear before meeting Jacinto's eyes dead on and raised her chin affecting her best look of imperious disdain before she said, 'You had best walk behind me then, hadn't you, fool?'

Jacinto laughed but warned her, 'you've been spending too long around Archadians. You're beginning to sound like them.'

'I didn't learn that from Archadians. I learned it from Ashe.'

She started walking aware that Jacinto and Selphie were following her. The sky had darkened to a beautiful indigo blue, the stars so numerous they looked almost extravagant, all glittering and twinkling high above. A big, bulbous full yellow moon hung heavy in the sky and ghostly shadows sprinted across the sand that rose suddenly like frozen waves before disappearing back into the quicksilver shadow again. Penelo whispered the incantation for libra.

'I've heard rumours coming out of Dalmasca,' Jacinto said his voice wafting to her through the darkness.

Keeping her eyes ahead of her as the chill of the desert in the dark closed around her Penelo bit back a sigh. 'So have I. I don't believe them. After everything Ashe went through with the occupation she would never interfere in another country's affairs. There's no way she'd send Dalmascan troops into Rozzaria.'

'Are you sure?' Jacinto sounded doubtful and a little worried. 'She married into House Margrace. Surely she would prioritise her husband's interests?'

Penelo stopped and turned around, hands on hips. 'Firstly,' she began irritated, 'Ashe didn't marry into House Margrace. Al-Cid married into Dalmasca. Ashe is a queen. Dalmasca's queen. She doesn't serve any country's interests except her own, which you'd know if you knew her.'

It was at that moment that her libra spell activated, just as she was building up a head of steam to give Jacinto a piece of her mind. The magick rippled through her mind like a breeze that blew through her soul. Penelo whirled around, hands flying as she cast a shield spell around the three of them.

A lone worgan, one of the Rozzarian kind, which were sleeker and leaner than the one's Penelo was used to, leapt through the air, exploding out of the darkness, huge jaws trailing thick strings of saliva.

Penelo ducked and rolled. Selphie rocked back and dropped to her knees as well, unshouldering her rifle in the same practiced movement. Jacinto remained standing, unlimbering his poleaxe and sweeping it over Penelo's head in one graceful sweep. The side of the pole hit the worgan before its four feet could hit the ground, knocking it flying with a pained yelp.

Another two worgans attacked from their right flank. Selphie shot one in the face. Penelo leapt to her feet and shouted the incantation for a stop spell. All three worgan's were captured in the spell's embrace but they were not Penelo's true target.

She strode past the worgans frozen in stasis and marched up to the viera cowering in the shadow of a sandbank.

'I was told you wanted to talk to me,' she said peering at the viera who remained in the darkness, hunched low and breathing harsh, 'it's hardly very nice to set fiends on me.'

A growl escaped the viera's throat and Penelo tensed, leaning back on her heels and raising her hands. The eerie sound, caught on the uncomfortable edge between hume-like and animal, triggered the memory of Fran aboard Leviathan as the mist rose and she exploded into frenzy. Concern lanced through her middle and she stepped into the darkness to drop on her knees beside the Viera.

'Are you alright?'

She asked reaching for a thin shaking shoulder. The viera's skin was clammy with cold sweat. She smelled of blood and madness and her body shock with some deep pain that went deeper than the physical.

The viera twisted, springing to life and snatched at Penelo's throat. Her long clawed fingers circling Penelo's throat without pressing down. Penelo leaned back, tilted her chin because she didn't have much choice but maintained eye contact. The viera's eyes were shadowed, all she could see was a sickly wet gleam in the moonlight. The viera's panting breath was sour with hunger.

'Penelo,' Jacinto loomed above them. He held his poleaxe pointed forward, the blade hovering barely two inches from the viera's head.

'Wait,' Penelo didn't dare move, 'Jacinto it's alright. Please step back and put the weapon up.'

'Are you joking?'

'Jacinto, do as she says,' Selphie said from further back, 'Penelo knows what she doing.'

Penelo kept her gaze fixed on the viera's shadowed face as she carefully, slowly lifted her hands to her throat wrapping one around the viera's thin wrist and the other to her own throat, beginning to gently pry the viera's fingers loose.

'It's alright,' she repeated once she could speak again. 'Whatever it is, I can help you.'

'They took my daughter,' the viera's voice was strained, tone low and gravelly.

Penelo grasped the viera's hand. 'Who took your daughter?'

The viera looked away, shifting back a half-inch. She hunched her shoulders. 'I cannot say. I must not tell.'

Penelo's brows drew together and pulse of adrenaline stung her veins. 'I don't understand. Do you know who took your daughter?'

'Her father.' The viera whipped her head around to face Penelo again rage in every word. 'He broke covenant. He tricked me. He wanted her all along for his own purposes.' The viera exploded to her feet. 'She is viera! He cannot have her!'

Penelo scrambled to her feet as well. 'I'll help you get her back.' She promised. The viera radiated pain, her heartache as hot and fierce as a firaga spell. Penelo's heart hurt for her.

The viera backed away, arms wrapped around her middle, back hunched. The moonlight limned her frame, catching on the filaments of her long white hair. She shook her head back and forth, back and forth.

'There are more.' She said. 'He has taken others. He is greedy. He goes against the will of Ivalice. He seeks to force change, to make a resurgence. He does not understand that there is a Will and a Way.'

'Who?' Penelo asked, a little desperately.

'Mrjaus.' The viera breathed. 'He will draw Her out. He seeks Yggdrasil.'

Penelo's eyes widened and her breath caught in her throat. She knew what Yggdrasil was, or at the very least she had more of an idea than the vast majority of living beings on Ivalice. Most importantly however she knew exactly who the viera was referring to when she said 'Her.'

'Fran.' She whispered.

'He is greedy.' The viera muttered staring down at the dark ground. 'He wants what we viera have been given for his own. He will shift the pieces here on Ivalice to force Her hand.'

'We'll stop him,' Penelo insisted.

She did not understand what the viera meant but she'd been a participant in more than enough Ivalice-shaking events to know one when she heard one. Sometimes the whys and the wherefores of a plot where a lot less important than simply doing what was necessary to stop it.

The viera looked at her then, her face entirely in shadow so that her voice seemed to float out of a void.

'You can't stop him. The pieces are already in motion. He is a dreamspeaker. He calls the children. He seeks to force the Daughter to leave the Wood before her time. Mrjaus has weakened the Father, whispering despair into his sleeping ear, year after year. Those two together will force Her back to Ivalice.'

Penelo's mind raced. If 'Her' was Fran than that meant the Daughter and the Father were…

A shiver of Magick fluttered through her mind. The only warning Penelo had that her stop spell had worn off. There was a growl, the shiver-slap of fast paws on sand. Jacinto howled in sudden pain. Penelo whirled around. A worgan latched onto Jacinto's back, riding him to the ground. Selphie struggled to sight her rifle as worgan and man thrashed on the ground. Penelo whipped out her Danjuro into the worgan's neck, punching through thick fur and flesh.

The worgan reared back, snapping wide jaws at Penelo, forcing her to release the Danjuro still stuck in the worgan's neck. Jacinto bucked off the ground throwing the beast off him. Penelo swept his poleaxe off the ground and skewered the worgan through the ribs. The pop of gunfire sounded behind her and Penelo heard the whimper and thud as the last of worgan died.

Immediately she turned back to the viera only to find her gone.

'Bugger it,' she swore -using a curse she had definitely learned from her Archadian friends.

'We can go after her,' Jacinto wheezed, standing with his hands braced on his knees and his long locks dangling down around his face.

'No,' Penelo shook her head looking out across the empty grey black desert. 'She's gone.'

'What are we going to do?' Selphie asked.

Penelo blew out a breath, causing the troublesome lock of hair that just would not stay in place to billow out ahead of her breath. 'We're going back to camp.' She said decisively.

'But…'

Penelo turned to Selphie and frowned. Selphie fell silent. 'It's late and we have to make sure the elders know the viera is gone so they don't do anything stupid. In the morning I'll…'

'What?' Jacinto asked.

Penelo scowled. 'In the morning I'm going to send mooglegraphs to Eruyt and Dianitz. Evidently there's yet another huge conspiracy going on and Balthier and Fran are right in the middle of it.'

Honestly if she didn't have over twelve years acquaintance with Balthier she might wonder how one man could generate so much trouble without even trying -and often –without even knowing anything about it in the first place. It almost made sense that Ashe had forced Larsa to place Balthier under permanent house - or rather - _island_ arrest after his return. Civilisation as they knew it did seem to be imperilled by his mere existence more often than not.

'It's just as well International Air Patrol and Rescue is here to save the day. _Again_. That whole family would be doomed without me and Vaan.' Penelo thought aloud, which garnered her odd looks from both her compatriots.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Three: Bad Dreams and Moonlight Strolls on the Beach**

Balthier was dreaming and he knew it. This somewhat diminished the experience, killing as it did the suspense.

He looked around the eldritch cave. The walls glowed with veins of purest magicite and reeked of mist. Huge pulsing roots punched down from the ceiling to penetrate the ground. The light within the roots burned through an outer surface that had the look of smoked glass and radiated mist like diamond dust rising from a winter lake. There was no clear sense of where the roots began or ended, each individual tendril unique and sufficient onto itself and yet also, intrinsically connected to all the others like a vast lattice work too large for the hume eye to make sense of. The mist rose like steam from the roots and hung in the air like a fog, clogging the brain and distorting the light, which seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

'I really hate this place,' Balthier said, or thought, or merely dreamed that he said it. Who could bloody tell?

'This place resides in your mind,' Fran told him.

She sat upon an outcropping of stone jutting out from the wall. The curve of the cave wall rose above her head like a canopy above a throne and geodes of magicite glittered like jewels around her seat. Fran appeared to glow, her hair shone with a perfect cool radiance. Her skin alight with a soft inner warmth. She wore a near diaphanous shift, her body lithe and limbs long and supple. Her ears twitched in a subtle motion and that was Balthier's cue that this was not a dream phantasm but the real Fran, as much as anything in a dream could be deemed real.

'Fran, I think we both know I have self-loathing enough to render that point irrelevant.' He pointed out, trying and failing to maintain a typical smirk.

Fran smiled slightly for him. 'You are ill at ease.'

Balthier sighed and looked around the cave again. Phantoms danced in the mist, half-formed faces lurching out of the gauzy air to assault the eye. The outline of bodies gathered like shadows in the corners and shimmered along the walls. Balthier knew that in the real cave, the one deep in the heart of Ivalice – as physically impossible as it was true – the phantoms in the mist were facets of memory. Ghosts of people and creatures long dead; remnants of Ivalice long forgotten everywhere except the roots of Yggdrasil where everything was remembered and nothing was understood.

'How's Ragnarok,' he asked not so much changing the subject as chasing a mental tangent, his thoughts still snagged on the impossible and the impossibly ancient, 'still dragging his heels on bringing about Ivalice's ultimate destruction, I hope?'

Fran nodded, 'he is taking the waters in southern Rozzaria.'

'Isn't there a war on there?'

Fran shrugged, 'I believe the carnage adds piquancy to the experience.'

Balthier sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. 'Do you ever get tired of the life we lead, Fran?' He asked. 'I dare say I'd have found the humour in this situation once. In fact the prospect of the embodiment of Ivalice's ultimate destruction having the work ethic of an underpaid moogle would have tickled me pink. Now, the joke's grown old.'

It was Fran's turn to change the subject. 'How is Niem?'

Balthier gave her a look. 'You would know better than I.' He pointed out. 'I know you visit her more oft than you come to me.'

'She is my daughter.' Fran said with simple lack of apology.

'I don't offer criticism,' Balthier responded just as bluntly. 'I only request that you ask me the question you mean rather than come at me from an angle.'

'You are angry.' Fran told him.

He turned away pacing a few steps through the mist. 'How's Yggdrasil?' He asked rather than address the point. 'Tell me, what's the subject of conversation at the moment? The current political strife in Ivalice? Or perhaps current affairs is not to our dear tree's taste? Mayhap you two are discussing the merits of Arandashian economics versus the Landissian School of communal ownership?'

Fran's left ear twitched. When she spoke she did so with some trepidation. 'You have been teaching children advanced economics?' She asked.

'You'd be surprised how receptive they are to it,' Balthier told her. 'I've found the key to cracking open young minds is to engage the body and mind simultaneously. Dangling children upside down from ropes until they can recite Aranda's formulae is a surprisingly effective technique. Fun too.'

Fran looked away, but he saw her fleeting smile. 'There is trouble.' She told him.

Balthier flinched and immediately shut down the conversation. 'Fran there is always trouble somewhere. None of which has aught to do with me. Thanks to her desert highness I am not allowed to participate in the world any longer. Apparently I am a greater threat to Ivalice than Rozzaria's collapse. I suppose I should be flattered but five years of forced retirement is beginning to grate. '

Fran pierced him with her gaze. 'It is not Ashe who keeps you from the world.'

Balthier kept his eyes on the mist wraiths writhing in the air. 'No it isn't,' he admitted. 'We both know what binds me.'

Fran flexed her hands over her knees not looking at him. 'You blame me.' It was not a question but something of that nature lingered in the quiver of her ears and the flicker of her eyelids.

'No,' Balthier shook his head as if to deny the words, the truth and the miserable bitterness that sizzled like heartburn in his chest. 'I blame bad luck and poor judgement.' He said. 'Both of which we know are my particular character flaws.'

Fran rose from the stone and walked through the mist toward him. 'You are not your father. It was not your will to seek ancient power, yet power you now have. You have been where no hume has 'ere been. Walked paths the hume mind can scarce comprehend, heard the voice of the Wood and on your lips the Word clings. Yggdrasil has dug roots into you, as the great tree has I, and you have been reformed as something other than what you willed.' She reached out and cupped his cheek and even in a dream the touch felt real. Real enough, in fact, that Balthier jerked away reflexively. Suddenly he was filled with the urge to put distance – if only figurative given this was a dream – between them.

Fran watched him pace with solemn eyes. 'I should not have asked the union of you.' She said. 'That there was none else that I would ask is no excuse. I have been your unmaking.'

'Bollocks,' Balthier pivoted on his heels. He threw up a hand and tried to wave away the thickening mist. 'You didn't deceive me. I was no green boy to seduce. I knew what I was agreeing to Fran.'

'You never wanted children.' She argued, she who had always known the fundamental truths he would never dare speak. 'You wished that the Bunansa line die.'

'And it will. Niem is viera. Her hume heritage is of no consequence.'

Fran dropped her eyes. 'I must leave you now. The mist is stirred and Ivalice shifts. Another turning point rolls closer and Yggdrasil feels the vibrations through her roots.'

'And we can't have the bloody tree getting skittish now, can we?' Balthier drawled. 'If that old tree decides to roll up her roots and give up we're all in trouble. Ragnarok will be forced to carry forth his purpose.'

'I am close,' Fran said. 'Yggdrasil is learning the Way of change but it will take time.'

'It already has Fran. You and Niem have centuries, but I do not.'

Fran merely looked at him. The same quietly sad but resolute expression on her face as he had seen years back when he had taken their tiny daughter in his arms and carried her out of Yggdrasil's domain. Ivalice had closed around Fran, sealing her away in a realm of timeless mist, divorced from reality. He wondered, not for the first time, how far Yggdrasil's roots had penetrated her mind and soul. He no longer knew how much of the Fran he had known still existed. They had both been unmade by Yggdrasil and while he could not entirely regret the choices they had made – especially as those choices led directly to Niem's conception – he could still resent them.

'You have more time than you know.' Fran told him her words echoing with the deepest sorrow. 'More time than any hume before you.'

Balthier closed his eyes, fists clenching. 'End this dream Fran,' there was an edge of pleading in his words. 'There is no point lamenting what can't be changed.'

'Once we were challengers,' Fran murmured. 'Once we believed that we were unbound and free. Once we were change, not changed.'

'Yes and look where that got us.' Balthier found his smirk, crooked and tinged in bitterness though it be. 'Perhaps if we'd had an ounce more caution fate would not have found us so interesting in the first place.'

Fran looked at him through a veil of mist. 'Awake now Balthier. It is time for the leading man to take the stage once more.'

Jolting awake like a rubber band snapping back Balthier sat up in his bed in his comfortable hovel, the soft susurrus murmur of the ocean sighing through his ears. A fat yellow moon, looking rather like a chocobo egg, reigned supreme in the night sky. Throwing back the sheets he dressed quickly and casually – although with care that his cuffs were correctly folded and that his belt pouches were secure – and then left his abode to walk along the shoreline.

There were fiends on the beach, of course. An off-shoot of a Iguion slept in the surf and some very odd looking piranha hovered over a series of interconnected rock pools a little ways off but none of the wildlife seemed overly concerned with Balthier. He carried his footwear in one hand as he walked over the cool sand, looking out across the wide Naldoa. Above his head he heard the rumble of a galleon-style airship and looked up to watch its fat body pass over. Dianitz was no Balfonheim. There was no music on the air or distant crash of roistering gone awry. Balthier walked the beach until he came to the place where jungle met dunes. This was a wilder place. The piranha gathered over the breakers flicked their rising fins at him and a conscious iguion began casting some manner of spell. Balthier sped up, intent on out pacing the fiend's range.

There was a crack and sizzle in the air; the sudden kindling of magick. Balthier spun around, a frustrated curse on his lips and was startled to see the iguion keel over dead, the stink of scorched amphibian flesh leaving an oily tang on the air. The piranhas fled, diving further out to sea as if the water would act as a magical barrier. Balthier found himself face to face with an angry elemental (not that there was any other kind of elemental in Balthier's experience). It was some kind of air elemental if he was any judge, burning like a ball of light in the dark. It hovered beside the smoking corpse of the unfortunate iguion who had incurred its wraith with its ill-timed spell.

'Bloody typical.'

Balthier was weaponless, without amour or a single accessory to his name. He stared at the throbbing elemental, which emitted a high buzzing noise. Balthier braced his bare feet in the sand, letting his hands hang at his sides and waited. The magick when it came, was an aero spell, breath-taking in its ferocity, rather literally so. Balthier felt the air drawn forcibly from his lungs into the spell before it was released as a tearing force meant to flay skin from his bones and blast said bones into fine granules of dust. The spell scythed toward him and crashed into his torso with full force. Balthier felt the bite of mist within the magick, felt the power permeate his soul and, like Balthier might cut off the magicite fuel circuit to the glossair rings to kill the Strahl's engine, the aero magick died as soon as it hit the mana inside him. Another spell hit him, so fast Balthier did not have time to taste its flavour before his soul absorbed and neutralised the effects.

'Alright, that's enough of that.'

Stepping through the barrage of magick Balthier reached out for the temperamental elemental shoving his fist through its amorphous body. Magick zinged up his arm, somewhat ticklish, as Balthier groped toward the central mass; questing fingers seeking the magicite core at the elemental's heart. He wrenched it loose, turning the damn fiend inside out as he did so. The elemental dissipated like so much bad air and Balthier stepped back to inspect the nugget of magicite in his palm.

'Oh bloody sodding hell.'

His sleeves hung in tatters off his arms, shredded by the aero spell. His cuffs clung to his wrists, almost entirely shorn of connective cloth. The body of his shirt was not much better, he could see the smooth skin of his stomach through the tears. It was nothing short of a miracle – and an endorsement of the leather he favoured –that his trousers remained unmarred and continued to cover all that common decency demanded. Stuffing his magicite prize into his pocket Balthier hurried back to his hovel.

Intent on nothing more or less than discarding the tatters of his shirt before anyone might see him in such a state he was considerably less than impressed to find two figures – bangaa by the looks of their silhouettes –peering through the window of his humble abode. The nearest of the two had a rather large spear strapped to his back and the other appeared to be armoured, judging by the odd bumps and padding quilting his shadow. A sword sheath poked out between his legs.

Lightning fast Balthier considered his options. He could swiftly turn tail and slink away before his inept visitors noticed him. He could jump the fence running just behind his abode, dash across the schoolyard and raise the alarm –consisting of a large bell. Or he could take the direct and undoubtedly most foolhardy approach. In honesty, there really was no doubt which option Balthier would choose. He was in no mood for caution and quite frankly there little chance these two could hurt him. More likely they'd harm themselves in the endeavour.

'Oi,' He called out to his uninvited guests. 'I'd ask you kindly to get away from my window, if you don't mind.'

The two bangaa collided with each other in the rush to face him, the spear wielder tried to pull his weapon through the swordsman and the swordsman staggered into the door in his haste to avoid accidental bifurcation.

Balthier scowled. 'Is that your best?'

There was a time he commanded a king's ransom on the bounty market and only the best came after him. This was pitiful. So much so that Balthier felt no shame in striding forward, despite the horrifying state of his shirt, toward his front door.

'You are Ffamran Mid Bunansa, the former sky pirate Balthier?' The bangaa with the spear gargled at him with a vaguely Rozzarian accent.

'I know that.' Balthier tossed over his shoulder as he opened the door and slapped on his crystal lamp. He walked straight to his closet and fished out a fresh shirt. The two bangaa hovered in his doorway.

'I am Giuseppe and this is my brother Luiz.' Spear bangaa indicated his partner. 'You are to come with us.'

Balthier paused in the process of buttoning his shirt to level an unamused look on the two bangaa. 'Tell me, when you were thinking up this grand plan – whatever it may be – did you really imagine that there was any chance I'd simply agree to come along with you, no questions asked?'

'It was no request,' Luiz gurgled, his speech so heavily sibilant Balthier had to infer the threat. The bangaa brothers squeezed through the door and advanced across his bedroom-come-study-come-main room with what was obviously meant to be menace aforethought but to Balthier's experienced but jaundiced eye looked like a great deal of stupidity.

'I'm getting too old for this malarkey,' Balthier sighed before rolling his shoulders, straightening his spine and shifting into a fighting stance. He raised one hand and quirked his fingers in insolent offering. 'Come on then. Let's see what you've got.'


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Four: Nothing Here is Real**

Giuseppe shifted onto the back foot, readying his spear for a forward thrust. Luiz held back, out of the way of his brother. Balthier waited, a pleased smirk painting his face.

'Enough,' a new voice entered the fray, causing all participants to freeze. A man stood in the doorway, a very familiar man, though not one Balthier was expecting to see.

'Basch Fon Ronsenberg?' He asked, leaning around the bangaa twins so he could see. 'What are you doing here?'

The once Judge-Imposter, older, thicker round the middle, but presumably no wiser, ignored him. He only had eyes for Giuseppe and Luiz. 'You were not meant to engage,' he told them, gruff and disappointed.

Chastened the bangaa brothers shuffled their feet, shifting out of combat readiness. They reminded Balthier of the children in his class caught in contravention of the rules and only moderately sorry for it.

'Sorry sir,' Giuseppe muttered.

'It was not our fault,' Luiz piped up, 'he,' and here he shot Balthier a lizard glare, 'refused to heed us.'

'Wait outside, both of you,' Basch stepped into the room and out of the doorway to let the bangaas escape. He watched them go with a grim, still vaguely disappointed look on his face.

Balthier studied him in confusion. Basch had grown his hair out but now the blond locks were faded, streaked through with silvery-grey. He had grown his beard and it now devoured half his face, so that his expression could only be read in the creases of his brow and the pull of his scar. Basch wore common adventurers gear, no livery of state to be seen, but the quality was good so clearly he was being well paid in whatever venture he was now employed. Basch waited until the bangaa twins were presumably out of ear shot before turning to Balthier. He drew breath to speak…

'Whatever it is,' Balthier interjected, 'it has nothing whatsoever to do with me. I'm a dissolute drunk and part-time educator. Completely below suspicion.'

Basch regarded him across the not very great expanse of the room. 'Isn't the expression 'above' suspicion?' he asked voice just as gravelly as Balthier remembered it.

Balthier spread his arms. 'Look around you,' he said, 'only an especially bored paranoiac would stoop to visit Dianitz.'

Basch chuffed a laugh. 'Aye well,' he rumbled, 'I have my duty.'

Balthier frowned, 'What are you talking about? Gabranth was released from service; you were put out to pasture. What purpose could bring you to my door?'

He and Basch had not had the most amicable relationship over their lengthy acquaintance. It had started well enough when they – and Fran – had been the only seasoned wayfarers on their epic quest to liberate Dalmasca. Necessity had forced them to work together to find the best route across half the breadth of Ivalice, during which time Balthier had rather enjoyed the Knight's laconic stoicism, if only for the entertainment value he derived from the other man's ludicrously tragic and convoluted history. After the liberation things had changed, Basch seemed to harbour the delusion Balthier was honourable and therefore ought behave as such. He had also, in his capacity as impersonator of his dead brother, often been forced by duty to chase Balthier around and harrying him into doing various favours for Larsa Balthier was disinclined to do. When Balthier had returned home to Archades, Basch had often been sent to poke around in his business on behalf of his nosy Imperial master. Balthier, who did not enjoy being judged for breaking rules, even when he was entirely guilty, had decided to relieve that frustration in a constant barrage of mockery against Basch and his endless, steadfast devotion to duty and the relationship had deteriorated from there.

'A man's duty to those he serves is not so easily severed,' Basch told him, pulling his attention back to the present.

'Well not if that man is you,' Balthier agreed uncharitably, 'but enough. What are you doing here?'

'Did the men not tell you?' Basch asked, irritating Balthier by answering with another question.

'Tell me what?'

Basch sighed. He looked weary and there was something in the slope of his shoulders that was familiar. He was here, Balthier realised, to ask another favour on behalf of someone else. His stance was the same as it had been all those times before.

'The Emperor is willing to revoke your exile,' Basch said looking at the rough floorboards and not Balthier, 'on one condition.' He looked up, 'you are to come with me to Rozzaria.'

'His Imperial Lordship is merely Ashe's catspaw in the matter of my exile,' Balthier pointed out irritably. 'He also has a vested interest in staying out of Rozzaria's political quagmire. Considering I am viewed a one-man walking calamity on par with Ragnarok himself, forgive me if I don't fall over myself in joy at the news.'

Basch gave him a tired look. 'Aye,' he said, 'I told them you would say as much.'

Despite himself Balthier was amused. 'Indeed?' he asked, 'Down to the word, or did you paraphrase?'

Basch sat down heavily at Balthier's desk. He was in light armour, not platemail, which was just as well as the chair was none too sturdy. Still it didn't creak when the other man sat down. Balthier frowned.

'I was against this,' Basch told him as if that was supposed to help considering Balthier had no idea what 'this' was, 'it is one thing to ask a soldier to return to war, but you are not a soldier nor ever was one.' He gave him a dry look, 'but you are an asset in any conflict and that is why I am here. Ashe,' Basch sighed, 'she lost trust in you when you returned to Archades. She worried that you would be…'

'Like me father?' Balthier interrupted. 'Yes I'd gathered that.'

'No,' Basch looked at him in surprise, 'that's just the point man. Cid was a lunatic chasing an impossible dream. He died of his own accord, as much as he did our hand. Ashe knows that. She knows that we were lucky Cid sought glory beyond this world and not in it.'

Balthier sat down on his bed, 'I'm not a tyrant. When have I ever shown any interest in conquest?'

'You are a man of the world Balthier,' Basch told him, 'where Cid was a man of ideas. You brought down Bahamut. You discovered the survivors of Nabudis. You died and came back. You cracked the Solarian code. Because of you and Fran the Viera are in the ascendant, active in Ivalice as they haven't been for centuries. You have done more to change Ivalice than your father and Vayne combined. That you did all this without any desire for power is exactly what makes you a threat.'

'I've heard this rot before,' Balthier told him aiming his scowl at Basch's boots –heavy traveller's boots, not very suitable for the beach. 'Madrigalise spouted the same nonsense when she sought to destroy us all.' He looked up at Basch, 'That I attract the interest of lunatics does not make me one.'

Basch met his eyes. 'The Occuria are at large in Rozzaria,' he said.

Balthier blinked, 'how the bloody hell do you know that?'

'I returned to Dalmasca after Lord Larsa released me,' Basch admitted. 'Ashe sent me to bolster the Margrace forces. Rozzaria is fractured and the Occuria seek to use the chaos to regain a foothold.'

'Ashe sent you to Rozzaria?' Balthier asked him, incredulous. 'Tell me, is it your life time ambition to fight in every war in Ivalice and on every side? What's next, planning to don a fur rug and impersonate a Rebe for Ondore's successor, are we?'

Basch frowned, 'Take this seriously, man. The Occuria are a threat to Ivalice.'

'So am I, apparently,' Balthier shot back. 'Is that your vaulted Highness's plan? Throw me at the Occuria and see who is left standing when the dust settles? What does she think I can do against a bunch of fossilised wraiths with a penchant for rhyming couplets?'

Basch didn't answer. Balthier suspected he had no good answer to give. He scowled at the man. 'What is this really about?' He demanded. 'I'm just a washed up pirate. Any influence I had on world events has been well and truly eroded. I'm obsolete. Yesterday's news,' he studied Basch. The man continued to sit. There was a passivity to him that rang a wrong note. Balthier rose from the bed and crossed to the window. He looked out at the night. He couldn't see the bangaa twins. All he could hear was the susurrus slur of the waves.

'Tell me Basch,' he said looking out at the blank darkness, 'where is it you have been fighting?'

'The Al-Salidi lands,' he answered promptly. 'The Bedownlin have risen and are demanding independence.'

'I thought the Bedownlin were fighting the Bervenians? Last I heard Al-Cid's benighted kin had their hands full holding the north. They'd more or less left the south to its own devices.'

'Aye that is the common perception; but the Margrace have not given up on uniting the Empire once more.'

Balthier turned back to face Basch, 'I hear the waters in the south are nice this time of year.'

Basch stared at him, clearly confused. 'I would not know. The Al-Salidi is an arid region.'

Balthier nodded and crossed to the door. Basch had neglected to close it when the twins left. Stepping to the threshold he looked down at the stoop. Sand got everywhere, living this close to the beach, and yet there were no footprints. No granular smudges tracking across his floor either, and no clumps of sand clinging to the soles of Basch's boots.

'For future reference,' he told the man sitting at his desk and watching him with a patient steadiness the real Basch Fon Ronsenberg had never mustered, 'I am a consummate liar. If you are going to rifle through my dreams to manipulate me, remember that I make things up all the time.'

Not-Basch rose from the desk, 'What are you talking about, man? What game are you playing?'

Balthier turned back to the impostor. He nodded to the clean floor. 'No footprints. The twins have disappeared without a trace and the surf sounds wrong. Those were the first clues. Second, you were too defeated, too vague, too bloody passive to be the real Basch. The man might be a slave to duty, but _he_ doesn't see it that way. You've been in my head, haven't you? Pulled out an image of Basch and decided to try it on for size, am I right?'

The image of Not-Basch seemed to ripple, like a desert mirage, or the air in front of Balthier's face after a bottle and half of knock-off mardu. When the mind-mirage faded Balthier was surprised to find himself face to face with a male helgas with more than a passing resemblance to the late Gran Kiltias Anastasis. The resemblance was not remarkable as all helgas looked like shrivelled viera with a severe case of lethargy and alopecia and therefore all looked alike in Balthier's entirely objective opinion, but the presence was.

'I had heard you were clever, hume,' the helgas said, 'I see that I should have heeded the rumours.' He bowed.

Balthier folded his arms, 'Right well, let's get the preliminaries out of the way shall we? Who are you and what do you want?'

The helgas smiled, which was not a pleasant sight. He had far too many teeth. 'It is not oft wise to ask a villain what he wants,' the helgas said, 'I would think you would know this.'

Balthier quirked his brows, 'You're a villain are you?' He had met many villains in his time but it was rare to find one who self-styled themselves as such.

The helgas ducked his head demurely. 'Many would say so,' he admitted. 'My name is Mrjaus and my wants, I dare to say, parallel your own.'

'Bold statement,' Balthier drawled, 'considering I'm rather mired in a self-imposed depression. I gave up wanting things some time ago.'

'No,' Mrjaus said with sudden conviction, 'you gave up seeking to achieve things. But want? Alas, you yearn for much.' Mrjaus shook his head sadly, 'you have been diminished Balthier. You have had your heart and soul carved from your body, stolen from you. You have been broken over the wheel of a form of devotion few will ever know.' Mrjaus stepped forward. He wore off-white robes that rippled like water as he glided over the clean swept floor. 'I know of what I speak.' He said. 'I too have been left the poorer for loving a Viera. I too once lost my joy, my will, and with it my hope.'

Balthier said nothing. Witty remarks and cutting putdowns withered and died on his tongue and he found himself unable to move as Mrjaus lifted his long, tapering fingers to cup his face. 'You were great once, Balthier. You were free. Now you are a ghost of yourself; a man shackled to a love that gives no succour. I have been in your mind, I have dreamed your dreams. I know your secret that which poisons your soul.'

'Let go of me,' Balthier couldn't move, save for the frantic beat of his eyelids crashing together, the slice and rasp of his lashes battering against each other like drawn swords.

'You are a liar, Balthier, a trickster, but I know your secret,' Mrjaus's long fingers glided over the planes of his face, tracing cheekbone and the sweep of his jaw, before rising up and wending fingers into the roots of his hair, carding through the short crop. Balthier closed his eyes, fear choking him. He could no longer hear the song of the surf. There was only the thunder of his screaming heart. 'Hatred,' Mrjaus crooned. 'Love's inevitable outcome; the final destination of selfless devotion. There is no shame in it. We all grow to hate that which dominates us. And she has dominated your heart from the first, has she not? The partner who would always be with you, the friend you could trust with all your shortcomings. She has betrayed you. She has brought you low.'

Balthier drew in a shuddering breath. Mrjaus held him fast, a hand to each side of his head, voice digging into his brain, 'tell me,' he coaxed, voice thick as honey, 'give your hatred a name.'

Like something being pulled from his deepest insides by a hook Balthier fought against the utterance to no avail. His throat convulsed, forcing his tongue to form a single syllable: 'Fran.'

The dream ended, far more abruptly than it had begun, a false reality torn away like a rug under his feet and Balthier pushed up off his elbows, his clothes damp from the tickle of the surf. He was on the beach. There was a large circle of scorched sand, melted smooth like glass just in front of his feet and in the middle of the circle a nugget of magicite – all that remained of the storm elemental.

Balthier sucked in a deep breath and raised his shaking hands to his face, scrubbing away the phantom memory of helgas fingers clinging to his skin. He stared at his ragged sleeves, the burn holes dotting the front of his shirt. Wet heat prickled his eyeballs. Unconsciously he reached for the cord around his neck, Lente's broken tear, and jerked his hand back. Rage, sudden and mindless as a tropic storm swept over him. He tore the pendant from his neck and flung it into the ocean. Except he didn't. The cord caught around his pointer finger, seemingly by its own design, and snagged, flipping forward through the air and looping around his wrist as he brought his arm back. Balthier stared at it, fury beating inside his skull. His chest rose and fell, wild as a fiend, and the roar of his heart was so loud it hurt.

He dropped to his knees in the surf, the water soaking through the knees of his leather trousers. Head bowed he sat like that, unmoving as the stars wheeled overhead and the sky thinned toward dawn.


End file.
